Tina put her stamp on "Vanity Fair, The New Yorker," and "Talk" magazine. Harry ran Random House. Over the years, they artfully crafted and recrafted the faces they showed the world, confident they were a match for anybody...especially for each other. They were constantly in the public eye, throwing parties, accepting the adulation of their peers -- all the time making sure that no one really knew anything about them. But what happens to the perfect married couple -- wealthy, attractive, running twin empires, the darlings of the media, the envy of their bitter rivals -- when their world starts to fall apart and the enchantment fades? This rich, fast-paced story of Tina Brown and Harry Evans is not only a brilliant account of two media stars, but also a tale of how this British couple molded and shaped every aspect of the American publishing world-- until it inevitably turned on them. Written with laser-sharp wit and a perceptive eye for revealing detail, "Tina andHarry Come to America" reads like a bestselling novel and is, at times, uncanny in its resemblance to William Thackeray's "Vanity Fair" -- a riveting, cautionary tale of power and the media.
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Book Description
In a story that will reverberate throughout the media world, Judy Bachrach traces the course of two careers and one romance -- all driven by soaring ambition. With the right amount of energy, money, and desire, Tina Brown and Harry Evans knew how to handle virtually everything that came their way. Once they arrived from England, they felt destined to climb to the heights of the American media. The couple epitomized within elite corporate as well as social circles what might be called parvenu royalty, which covered both of them with the dazzling glaze of power, position, and fame. Underneath, of course, they were quite different: nature's Americans, one might say, hungry, passionate, forever reinventing themselves.
Editorial Reviews
From Publishers Weekly
The rise and downward slide of magazine editor Tina Brown (Vanity Fair, New Yorker, Talk) and husband, Harry Evans (former editor of the London Sunday Times and, later, president of Random House), goes under the microscope in Tina and Harry Come to America: Tina Brown, Harry Evans and the Uses of Power, which has been causing a stir in New York media circles, for whom stories of the media pair have long been catnip. For many readers, the real news in the book will be the account of the couple's earlier years in England rather than the familiar ground of their New York power struggles in the last decade. Vanity Fair contributing editor Judy Bachrach's book is well researched, but her determination to make the couple's story emblematic of contemporary media culture introduces a degree of editorializing.
Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.
About the Author
Judy Bachrach, formerly a journalist for The Washington Post and a political columnist for the Washington Star, is now a contributing editor to Vanity Fair. She lives in Washington, D.C., with her husband and two children.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
11 of 12 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
This books leaves many questions unanswered,
By Johnny Korlo (Canada) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Tina and Harry Come to America: Tina Brown, Harry Evans, and the Uses of Power (Hardcover)
I started this book with the conviction that I would finally learn what had made Tina Brown such a feared and respected editor. Unfortunately, when I finished it I was somewhat disappointed. Judy Bachrach certainly does a good job of finding disaffected former employees who dish out all sorts of dirt on Tina Brown and detail working practices and habits which seem to have caused her underlings some serious grief. But what I did not really learn was what exactly why she was brought across from London to edit first Vanity Fair and then the New Yorker. She was clearly not a charlatan, she clearly had talents, but the use to which she put them is obscured by the dirt and nastiness regularly dumped all over Brown by other people quoted in this book. As a reader of the New Yorker for the last 15 years I can say that she did indeed change it, in many ways for the better. I still have some of my old pre-Brown copies of the magazine and while they do contain the occasional excellent articles, there are also many long, long screeds about fruitflies and tomatoes and some obscure aspect of baseball which were allowed to ramble on and on. Whatever faults she may have had, Tina Brown at least turned the magazine into something I wanted to read and actually looked forward to every week. She did make mistakes (as the book makes clear) and I agree with critics who say the Diana issue was extremely ill-judged, but the magazine now is in many ways a sorry shadow of what it once was. It saddens me to say that I look forward to Harper's and Atlantic Monthly with more anticipation than I do the New Yorker. The one area where the magazine has really collapsed is the fiction section, where whoever is in charge seems to have completely given up. Almost every week it's the same thing, exceedingly well-known names writing variations on the same themes, be it Alice Munro or William Trevor or whoever else it might be. What happened to the magazine's fine old tradition of unearthing new authors? I note that Zadie Smith is now going to be writing a story for the magazine, which is a good thing, but it would have been more impressive had the magazine published her before the success of "White Teeth". Yes, there has been the odd New Fiction issue with a few new authors, but I can think of no area where the New Yorker has collapsed so miserably as in fiction. So do read Bachrach's book if you have an interest in Tina Brown and Harry Evans but don't expect an answer to all your questions.
7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Bitchy but amusing,
By A Customer
This review is from: Tina and Harry Come to America: Tina Brown, Harry Evans, and the Uses of Power (Hardcover)
WHAT did Tina Brown do to Judy Bachrach? That's really the question you keep asking yourself while reading this bitchy if amusing book. Not that Ms Brown and Mr Evans don't deserve quite a bit of the stick they get here, but it is so... unrelenting. Judy Bachrach now works for Tina Brown's successor at Vanity Fair, and she applies to Tina and Harry the gossipy techniques which made VF's success. She should have applied fuller disclosure to her motives.That being said, most details here are probably accurate. Thebook is not published in the UK for fear of libel suits. Not very sportsmanlike of Tina and Harry.
5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
nasty fun,
By
This review is from: Tina and Harry Come to America: Tina Brown, Harry Evans, and the Uses of Power (Hardcover)
This book is a nasty, in a sophistiacated 1930s sort of way. Think, Clare Booth Luce's "The Women". This book is the story of an unrelenting social climber who had genuine talent and ability on her side but little grace, humility or kindness. And it caught up with her. The book does a good job of showing why Ms. Brown has so many enemies and why she rose to such starry heights in the first place. It's great for people who love NYC, or who love journalism, or anyone who just wants a juicy piece of shameless gossip.
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